


the flaw in the theory

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Communication Failure, Coulson will get worse before he gets better, Daisy And Her Huge Crush On Coulson, Danger, F/M, Future Fic, Introspection, POV Phil Coulson, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Post season 3a, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 06:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5364749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daisy and Coulson go on a stakeout and she wonders why she's the only one who hasn't completely given up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the flaw in the theory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts).



She sighs loudly, bored and cranky, her feet having fallen asleep, the wiggle room in this car not so great.

Coulson throws her a sideways look.

"If you didn't want to come, you didn't have to."

Daisy wants to snort at that, but it probably wouldn't help Coulson's mood. The mood that has been going on for months now. She looks through the window of the car, looking for a more polite way of putting it.

"If I didn't come the task would fall on some innocent victim," she says bitterly. "I volunteered."

"You didn't need to."

"And leave you to your own devices again? Yeah, you'd like that."

Coulson lets out a low growl and looks away in the opposite direction, at the warehouse they are monitoring. She's surprised he even agreed to let her come along at all. He is all about solo missions these days, skulking out of the base at night in pursuit of more bad guys. And it's not like he's not effective, he is. He's just not a team player anymore. And the team returns the feeling. No one would have come with him, anyway. Just Daisy. Everybody else has pretty much given up. And at times it feels a bit unfair – _it's Coulson_ – but she understands, can't really resent or blame anyone but Coulson for that. It's what he seems to want, anyway. Everybody wins.

Everybody loses.

But yeah, a stakeout with the Director is no one's idea of a good time right now.

It's funny because Daisy never really did this with Coulson, the old Coulson, before... before everything, and once upon a time would have probably been excited by the idea. Now she's here, sharing unmarked car and mission with him and it's in these circumstances. Just her luck, she guesses.

"You know that if I'm not here doing this, no one would have come," she says, more quietly.

"No one had to be here at all," he protests again.

The roles have been reversed a bit because he's the reckless one now. But only with himself.

"This is not a one-man operation."

"I can handle it," he tells her.

"No, you can't."

The firmness in her voice seems to get through somehow and Coulson lets whatever reply he had ready drop away. Daisy looks at her tablet again, wondering who's foolish enough to try to move this volume of blackmarket alien tech with the authorities being all kinds of paranoid about this stuff lately. Bad guys are so greedy. She does wonder how Coulson was thinking of arresting them all tonight, outmanned and outgunned. His usual gig.

"So are we going to use your guerrilla tactics tonight?" she asks.

"My _guerrilla_ tactics?"

"I read the mission reports, Coulson. I know what you are up to lately. Risk and stealthiness and... do you have anything in your wardrobe that is not black?"

He looks down at what he's wearing, a bit self-conscious about his black turtleneck for a moment. His face is... almost normal. For a moment, anyway.

"The people we are up against, whoever they are this time, are always more, better funded, more willing to do damage than us. We have to make up for it."

Daisy doesn't like the sound of it, but it's the closest to an explanation of his actions Coulson has given in two months. His voice is weary and raspy now, as if the sand of the alien planet is permanently stuck in his throat, even after all this time.

"Taking stupid risks won't give you the edge against them," she tells him, casually. The last thing she wants to do is admonish him – not when she knows he's still hurting, haven't stopped for a moment. She's _furious_ with him. But he knows that. 

"You've read the mission reports," he replies. "You know it does."

Results. Yeah, Coulson has not been lacking on those. You could say he's a model agent. When he's alone. In his twisted mind it makes sense. The risks he needs to take, they are easier. Pushing everybody away, that's easier too. Daisy sits up, turning towards him, pulling her knees up against her chest.

"Look, I know you feel responsible–"

"I am responsible," he cuts her off. "A person is dead because of me."

A person. No name. Just a non-descript person.

_Many people are dead because of me_ , Daisy thinks, bitterly, she could write him a long list. Not a competition, and deep down she knows she's a stronger person than Coulson. She's not proud of it, it's just the truth.

"Why would you listen to me now but... that was not on you. The one who pulls the trigger is responsible. Always."

She watches his shoulders tense completely. He keeps looking ahead. How long since he's been able to meet her eye properly?

"Someone dies because of me, someone dies because they're standing next to me, it doesn't really matter. The result is the same: they're dead."

Daisy narrows her eyes at him. 

"So that's your great theory? If there's no one around you, they can't get hurt?"

"I can't go on as I was before," Coulson says, strangely calm. Daisy hates this new calmness in him that feels like defeat. "It was irresponsible."

Emotions, getting close to people, that's irresponsible? He sounds more like Grant Ward, actually. Maybe that was kind of Ward's point, in the end. Once he almost convinced Daisy she was weak, too, for caring. She felt that temptation – if you don't care, you don't _fail_. Coulson doesn't have the luxury of failing again. Except himself. The solo missions are easily explained.

Daisy would love to reach out and tell him he's not just plain wrong but also he's _an idiot_ , and she would love to comfort him, too, wrap her arms around him and tell him it's okay. But she can't. Reach out and touch him. All previous offers of comfort – even after she almost killed herself to bring him back and he was injured – had been swiftly rejected. She has no reason to believe he would accept it now. She's scared to find out he wouldn't.

Maybe she is the last line of resistance, a bother. Maybe Coulson is just waiting for her to give up like the rest. Figuring that if he spends enough time looking right through her and not seeing her, and not talking to her, or talking to her like she's already a ghost of his past, then some day she will agree with him on this.

Maybe, but Daisy still hopes that's not tonight.

"I think they're on the move," she says, showing Coulson the heat signatures on her tablet, a group of seven finally moving the cargo inside the building.

"Let's go."

They get on the move as well, advancing silently to the warehouse. Coulson seems to have gotten stealthier, faster these days. He's a good footsoldier, if not much of a leader.

"You lead, I cover you," he tells her.

"Yes, Director."

Daisy herself wonder if there's irony in her voice, he's not been much of a Director lately, only nominally. 

They work together well, though. (Can't he see how well they would do on the field like this, if only he stopped closing himself off to everything but the mission?)

They're pretty lethal, their partnership easy, with Daisy leading the charges and vibrating the goons away from the dangerous artifacts, Coulson and her back to back as he ices a guy who tries to come at her from behind.

Then, out of nowhere, a bullet she is not fast enough to deflect, because she didn't see. It goes straight for her and lodges itself in Daisy's shoulder. The pain is terrible (it never gets any easier, she thinks, admiring her own seasoned agent persona for a moment) but not as much as the surprise. Not as horrible as Coulson's face when he realizes. He neutralizes the shooter, coming late to the party from somewhere on the second level with a timing they couldn't anticipate, before he takes another shot at Daisy.

Daisy falls to the ground and before losing consciousness she watches a couple of the bad guys slipping away as Coulson kneels besides her to wrap her in his arms. In that moment she knows she will _never_ agree with his theory.

 

+

 

A stupid stray bullet in a stupid mission and they have to bring her to the operating table for a while.

Coulson wants to blame it on her, he wants to be thinking "I could have done this alone, I _should_ have done this alone" and he wants to think that tonight just proves that he was right, that he had been making the right choices all along. But he can't think like that. Tonight proves _he was wrong_. The terror and surprise in Daisy's eyes when the bullet hit her, when she fell. He had been so wrong. Deep down he knew it, but the alternative hurt too much. Deep down he knew it, but by the time he had wanted to stop he had forgotten how. He still doesn't know.

The doctors say she's lucky (Coulson snorts, out of earshot of the rest of the team, apart from the team, like he's been doing all this time), and the bullet only got muscle, no permanent damage and judging by Daisy's record she'd be back in the field in a couple of days. They leave her in medbay for the night, so she can get some rest and some fluids for one night.

Coulson goes to visit her immediately, forgetting his vow of cowardice for a moment.

She looks okay. Impatient, annoyed, figdeting with the rough fabric of the sheets. Just... Daisy.

Coulson sits by her side, quietly, waiting, because he knows she at least deserves the first word – if she decides she wants to talk to him, that is. He wants to tell her that it's his fault she got shot ( _are you talking about tonight or...?_ and god his head hurts just trying to keep it all together, just trying to pretend and go on doing the least possible damage around him) and that this proves his theory and that she's an idiot. She's an idiot but he was wrong. _See? This is my fault. See? This was what I was telling you. See? You're better off without–_ He doesn't want to say any of this to her because he doesn't want to lie to her ever again.

He can feel Daisy waiting for him to lift his head and look at her before she starts talking. Coulson delays the moment by staring at his hands very intently, studying his glove for any traces of her blood. But he can't delay it forever. It wouldn't be fair to Daisy. She has every right to finally say her peace, to tell him to go to hell. He's been unfair enough as it is. When he looks up Daisy has her lips pressed together and every muscle in her face is tense, but it doesn't matter. She's alive.

"See? Your stupid theory doesn't work," she says, her voice hard and resolved. "You've been acting like I don't exist for months. I don't even know if you care about me anymore. Does that keep me safe? No. A stray bullet could have killed me tonight. Just like that. I could be dead right now."

Coulson holds his breath, silently agreeing. Daisy could be dead right now. And it really doesn't matter whose's fault it was.

Daisy could be _dead_.

She could have bled out in his arms and Coulson feels profoundly ashamed for even thinking this but he knows he wouldn't have survived this one.

He can tell he's crying because something warm and wet drops down his cheeks, not because he has any knowledge he's actually doing it. He only realizes what is happening when she does.

Daisy's expression changes immediately.

"I'm so sorry," she tells him. "Oh god, no, I didn't mean to–"

He breaks down, bending over, pressing his face against her stomach, trying to muffle the strange, pitiful noises coming from his throat, crying into the fabric of the medbay's bedclothes, crying for how impotent he has felt, how guilty, and how much he has missed Daisy, and how terrified he's been of her dying, even long after he knew he had already lost her.

"Please, Coulson, don't – don't cry."

But her words only make everything worse.

It's just loud, open sobbing now. He doesn't remember having cried so hard in his life, so freely. Maybe when he was a kid. His lungs start to ache soon.

Coulson cries even harder as Daisy's arms tighten around him, as she covers the top of his head with comforting kisses, as she whispers _it's okay_ and _I'm okay_ and _**we** are okay_ over and over, until her voice breaks and he can only feel the shape of the words as they are breathed against his skin.

He doesn't know how long he spends like that, quietlty crying into Daisy's lap, with her fingers in his hair, caressing from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck, but he knows at some point he falls asleep like that, exhausted, because at some point he wakes up, the disconcerting green light of medbay in his face, in the outline of his hand still clutching the bed covers. He keeps waking up from time to time, from nightmares, all through the night – falling back asleep when he realizes the weight of Daisy's hand still twisted gently into his hair, her body breathing under his cheek.

 

+

 

The doctors told her to wait one more day to go back to work but Daisy knows there's no rest for the wicked and she has to take advantage of her Inhuman recovery time. The wound on her shoulder is just a midly annoying bite now, and she can move it completely. She's ready. Last night's mission was succesful enough, after all – they got the cargo, and four of the bad guys are in custody and running their mouths to Bobbi right now. Results. She knows they are important right now. In that sense Coulson was right.

The rest of the team knows better than to tell her to take it easy, so they shake their heads, amused, and keep out of her way. Perhaps she shouldn't judge recklessness in others so easily, she thinks, as she puts on her jacket.

She's crossing the hangar, a buzz of activity around her, when she sees Coulson make a beeline for her.

"I've been looking for you," he tells her, stopping her.

"Really?"

That's not something she hears from him often these days. Or at all.

"Yes," he says.

He hands her his tablet. The specs on a raid planned for tonight. She tilts her head at Coulson.

"Guns? Just regular guns? Boring."

"They might be connected with this new anti-alien vigilante group," he explains.

"Okay. _Not_ boring then."

"You want to come?" he asks her, not shying away from her look of surprise.

He looks different from the man who had been treating her like a ghost for months. He doesn't look like his old self either – he is more raw, the edges sharper. But Daisy is okay with that.

"You and me?" she asks, making sure she gets his meaning.

"It's not a one-man operation," Coulson says, _easily_ , and it sounds like he's talking about something other than the raid.

Daisy holds his gaze, noding. "Count me in."

"We might have to use some of my dirty guerrilla methods," he warns her, almost humourously.

"I can adjust," Daisy says.

Coulson smiles.

Which – okay, she might have to leak this to every news outlet, starting with the Rising Tide, because this is momentuous and newsworthy, this Phil Coulson smiling. It's tiny, but with how things have been the past couple of months, it's blinding.

But he's not done with the surprises.

"And after the mission maybe we could stop by and have some dinner."

"What? Like a date?" Daisy asks, confused by the offer.

"No," he says. Oh well, it was too much to hope for. She'll settle for the tiny smile on his lips. "Not _like_ a date. A date."

"Wow, that's – no, yeah, I'd be thrilled to. But, that's quite the 180 degrees thing."

She watches him swallow before he explains. Still holding her gaze. How long since...?

"After last night... I don't know when it's going to happen," he tells her. "I don't know if it'll be my fault, or no one's fault, or a stupid stray bullet. But now I know where I want to be when it happens. Right next to you."

He takes Daisy's hand in his gently, pressing his thumb across her knuckle.

"I feel the same," she tells him, relieved to be able to say it.

"I didn't know if you would..."

She squeezes his hand.

"This time you lead, I'll cover you," she tells him. 

Coulson looks touched by the offer.

He's not used to someone having his back these days.

"Let's suit up," he tells her after a moment to gather himself.

They get to it, walking side by side.

"You're wearing black again?" Daisy teases him.

He shakes his head at her. "Not tonight. I've got a date."


End file.
